Nonlinear Symmetry Breaking to Enhance the Sagnac Effect in a Microresonator Gyroscope

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel nonlinear symmetry breaking method that significantly enhances the Sagnac effect in a tiny microresonator gyroscope, overcoming thermal noise limitations and enabling high-performance chip-scale inertial navigation devices.

Contribution

The authors propose a new approach to measure the Sagnac signal in microresonators, achieving a 10^4 signal enhancement and noise suppression, surpassing previous techniques in miniaturized gyroscope technology.

Findings

10^4 enhancement of Sagnac signal

27 dB suppression of thermal noise

22 dB reduction of environmental noise

Abstract

Optical gyroscopes based on the Sagnac effect have been widely used for inertial navigation in aircrafts, submarines, satellites and unmanned robotics. With the rapid progress in the field of ultrahigh-quality whispering gallery mode and ring resonators in recent years, these devices offer the promise of a compact alternative to ring-laser gyroscopes (RLGs) and fiber-optic gyroscopes (FOGs). Yet, successful commercialization of a microresonator gyroscope has been hindered by the scaling of the Sagnac effect with resonator area. While several techniques have been proposed to enhance the Sagnac effect in microresonators, these enhancements also amplify the thermal noise in the microresonator. Here, we present a novel approach to measuring the Sagnac signal in chip-scale devices that overcomes this fundamental noise limitation to achieve unprecedented performance in a 200 {\mu}m optical resonator - the smallest reported to date. Our proof-of-concept design shows a 10^4 enhancement of the Sagnac signal while simultaneously suppressing thermal noise by 27 dB and environmental contributions to noise by 22 dB. We believe this approach offers a pathway for integrated photonic gyroscopes with sensitivities that match or exceed RLGs and FOGs.